Counter anti-Gypsyism
Not surprisingly, the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency last year concluded once again that the Roma are the most discriminated against group in the EU: “Every second Roma respondent said that they were discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity at least once in the previous 12 months.”
Anti-Gypsyism most evidently reveals itself in violent acts, hate speech, or racist discourse. But beneath that most visible layer of anti-Romani sentiment, lie deeper, often invisible or even unconscious, discriminatory attitudes. Even if authorities acknowledge the socio-economic situation of Roma as a problematic issue, they are often denied their full rights as equal citizens, excluded from an active role in policy design and implementation, and approached in a patronizing manner. Such ‘applied anti-Gypsyism’ is the background to the unequal treatment of Roma – on the labour market, or in the provision of social services such as housing, healthcare and education.
The European Union must not only speak out against flagrant forms of discrimination and use all legal means to prosecute overt anti-Gypsyism, it also needs to take the hidden but structural patterns of discrimination into account in policy design and implementation, because the anti-Gypsyism-factor compounds other factors inhibiting effective Roma inclusion policies. In particular at local level, additional efforts are needed to overcome the negative effects of applied anti-Gypsyism.
The EU could also make an active contribution by supporting awareness-raising initiatives with an explicit anti-Gypsyism component, to complement the implementation of the Equality Directives and the Framework Decision of Racism and Xenophobia, analogous to the 2001-2006 Community Action Plan against Discrimination.
